Working Between Civil3D & AutoCAD

[peholmgren]

My company is beginning to make the transition from EaglePoint software to Civil3D. While that has gone mostly well, another concern is coming up with respect to working between AutoCAD and Civil3D. Because we only have a handful of licenses available (for now anyways), only a few people can be using Civil3D it at a time. Coupled with the fact that some people are still resistant to using Civil3D or have not had enough training to be efficient yet, there are going to be times when work on a project will need to be done in AutoCAD, whether it be for drafting or plan preparation, etc. Bouncing between programs is far from seamless, though, and Civil3D objects are recognized as "Proxy Entities" or something like that. Additionally, I don't completely know how changes made in AutoCAD ultimately affect tools and objects in Civil.

I've also experimented some with exporting work to AutoCAD, but that results in one of two results:

1) There is an error regarding xreferences that I don't understand.

2) Many items come in as blocks and making changes can be cumbersome.

Has anyone else had much experience with balancing work between AutoCAD and Civil3D? What is a good way (if one exists) to keep work flowing reasonably between the two programs? Thoughts appreciated...

[Anonymous]

What you will need is to install Civil 3D object
enabeler from the autodesk website.  This will let the acad users view and
print the civil objects.  Labels are even able to be moved in acad (not
edited but moved).

John

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<peholmgren> wrote in message
href="news:6133279@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6133279@discussion.autodesk.com...

My
company is beginning to make the transition from EaglePoint software to
Civil3D. While that has gone mostly well, another concern is coming up with
respect to working between AutoCAD and Civil3D. Because we only have a handful
of licenses available (for now anyways), only a few people can be using
Civil3D it at a time. Coupled with the fact that some people are still
resistant to using Civil3D or have not had enough training to be efficient
yet, there are going to be times when work on a project will need to be done
in AutoCAD, whether it be for drafting or plan preparation, etc. Bouncing
between programs is far from seamless, though, and Civil3D objects are
recognized as "Proxy Entities" or something like that. Additionally, I don't
completely know how changes made in AutoCAD ultimately affect tools and
objects in Civil. I've also experimented some with exporting work to AutoCAD,
but that results in one of two results: 1) There is an error regarding
xreferences that I don't understand. 2) Many items come in as blocks and
making changes can be cumbersome. Has anyone else had much experience with
balancing work between AutoCAD and Civil3D? What is a good way (if one
exists) to keep work flowing reasonably between the two programs? Thoughts
appreciated...

[Anonymous]

In addition to John's post, to use the object
enabler, AutoCAD and Civil 3D MUST the the same platform (209 and 2009, 2008 and
2008).  You can't enable Civil 3D 2009 objects onto AutoCAD
2008.

--
Matt Kolberg
Global CADD Systems

href="http://www.gcscorp.ca">www.gcscorp.ca

[peholmgren]

Got it and thanks. Looks like it will be helpful for mostly only minor changes?

[peholmgren]

Got it and thanks. The grip editing is VERY helpful. Looks like it will be helpful for mostly only minor changes?

[dfarris75]

Imo, you really can't work with both C3d and AutoCAD in terms of design and even in some aspects of the drafting. If your office must live in a hybrid environment of the two it might be best to just use Civil 3d for what you can to make live a little easier then (e word here - I can't bring myself to say it) the C3d objects so the peters who don't, can't, or won't use C3d can "do their magic" with regular AutoCAD. I honestly think this would be a big headache for the users who do use C3d regularly.

Maybe a better option would be to segregate the office as well as the projects so C3d users can maximize their use of the program. Otherwise it's not really a worthwhile investment.

[peholmgren]

Thank you for the insight. I am hoping this "hybrid" period is only temporary, myself, but precisely how temporary remains to be seen. In the meantime, it sounds like I might need to add aspirin to my shopping list.